


XVII And XIII

by darlathecyborgpluviophile



Category: Persona 3, Persona 4
Genre: crossovers, theodore shows up last minute too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlathecyborgpluviophile/pseuds/darlathecyborgpluviophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of Nanako Dojima, Teddie meets some interesting people while in limbo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	XVII And XIII

Teddie was lost.

Somewhere, deep down, it wasn’t very surprising to him; considering what he really was, the fact that he had been privileged enough to be in the wonderful human world for so long had been miraculous. Now that everything made sense and the haze in his mind had lifted, he supposed it really was time to leave and get back to where he truly belonged.

Except…..

He looked all around him; a thick fog hung in the air, masking most of his immediate view, but the few things he could see had a sort of blue-ish tint to them. He glanced down at his feet and saw a black, rough surface, almost like a road. He strained his tiny ears and deployed his excellent sniffer, but there was nothing to be heard or smelt.

Where in the heck was he? It wasn’t the TV World; he knew that place like the back of his paw, and would know if he was there, but on the other hand he knew it wasn’t the human world either, even if it had developed an eerily similar fog as of late.

Not knowing what else to do, he retraced his steps. He had walked for a few minutes from the place he had woken up over to where he was puzzling out his situation, and before that, he had been in Inaba Hospital, Intensive Care Unit…..

A sudden wave of memories painfully crashed over him, and it took him a solid minute to stop cringing and remind himself that he probably shouldn’t think about that.

Soon he realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere by simply standing and sulking, so he picked a direction, spun himself around, and began walking and sulking.

What would happen to him now that he existed only in limbo? The thought scared him; he didn’t really like new things. Even taking the step to go through the exit televisions himself for the first time had been terrifying and strange, though he knew his friends would be waiting for him on the other side. Maybe after wandering for a while and clearing his mind he’d be able to become a simple, mindless Shadow again.

Yes, he nodded. That sounded like a good choice. He knew his ego and what little humanity he had would fade soon anyway, and the ability to think definitely seemed to be hurting him more more than helping him at this point.

“Lost?” Came a sudden, cheery voice from behind him. He turned around and saw, of all things, a girl, smiling and holding her hand up in a greeting. A beary cute girl, his mind decided to add, as he looked her up and down, baffled that there was anyone else in this place. She wore a worn, unfamiliar school uniform, and he wondered just where on earth she had come from.

“You okay?” She asked, giving him a weird look. “You seem kinda startled, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I think I’m okay,” he replied, distantly noticing that his voice sounded a lot less upbeat and squeaky than usual.

“Well that’s good, at least.” It was her turn to look him up and down, at first quizzically then almost sadly. “You’re a Shadow, huh?”

He jumped a bit, surprised she could tell just by looking at him. Was it really that obvious?

“Well…yeah, I am.”

“And what brings you here?”

“…I’m trying to forget who I am so I can be a normal Shadow again.”

“Why would you want to do that?” she asked, then a realization dawned on her. “You’re not fully human or Shadow, are you, huh? Just kinda stuck in the middle.”

Teddie was taken aback by the whole situation. He sighed, “Yeah, I guess so,” and quickly changed the subject. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, mine? I’m Minako.”

“Mina-chan, huh?”

She giggled at the nickname. “Yeah! What’s yours?”

“My name is Teddie.”

“Aww, that’s so cute!” She bent down to ruffle the little hairs on his head. “Teddie the Shadow.”

He huffed. “I prefer ‘Teddie the Bear’.”

She giggled again. “Right, right, that would make sense too. Anyway, Teddie, I think there’s someone you should meet.” She took his blue paw in her shining, ghostlike hand, and they began walking together.

The road to this ‘someone’ was long and hard to see, and Teddie got bored soon into their journey.

“Who are we gonna meet?”

“Oh, just an old friend of me and my brother’s. I think you might like him.”

Teddie had another question on the tip of his tongue when suddenly the fog gave way and the area around them became steadily less blue and instead a much darker color.

“Where are we?”

“Almost there,” the girl responded. Her face was creased a little in certain places, signifying concentration. There was a hardness to her as she walked through the dark with him that Teddie hadn’t noticed before when she had been acting bubbly.

They approached a large brick wall with two golden statues hanging on it, staring blankly into the space in front of them. One of them, Teddie realized, looked almost exactly like his guide.

“Ummm, Mina-chan, why does that statue look like you?”

Her face twisted a little more. “It’s the Great Seal, holding back all of the world’s darkness. Beyond it lies the largest collection of Shadows you’ll ever find, and it’s only me and my brother preventing preventing them and their 'Mother’ from escaping and causing the apocalypse.”

Teddie nearly jumped out of his fur. “WHAT?! The world’s largest collection?”

“Yeah, and that’s where we’re headed.”

His eyes went wide, and he began struggling against her tight grip. He took it all back, Shadows were serious, scary business, and even though he was one-

Even though he was one-

He found he couldn’t finish the sentence, and quickly stopped struggling.

Minako stopped caressing the strange wall in front of them to look at him. “Are you okay, Teddie?”

“I’m…alright,” he said glumly. After all, there wasn’t really a reason to be scared of Shadows anymore if he was one, right?

Minako returned to her work, letting go of his paw and slowly leaning her head against the cold wall under the statues, softly pressing her hands against the brick and uttering something like a prayer. Teddie let her be, glancing around the gloomy area and whistling absent-mindedly.

Suddenly, the area seemed as foggy as the road they had just come from, except he slowly realized that it was not in fact fog, but pure darkness that was swallowing everything in its path. Soon enough everything in his line of sight was gone; the statues, the ghostly form of Minako, the brick wall, and he was all alone in the inky blackness.

“Wh-who are you?” he managed to stammer out. “Are you Mina-chan’s friend?”

The voice that emerged from the penetrating darkness was rough and hoarse, and sounded like it was fighting hundreds–no, thousands–of others for dominance.

“I,” The clearest and most recognizable voice began, gravelly and disjointed from disuse, “I am the thirteenth Arcana, Death.”

Teddie was suddenly very, very frightened.

“Death…?”

“Yes, young one.”

There was a pause as Death seemed to take in the sight of the small, lonely bear before Teddie felt its darkness slowly seep into him. It probed through his mind, looked through his eyes and saw all of the major events in his short life, from meeting Yu and Yosuke in the TV world, to unveiling his new body, to him openly weeping after Nanako’s death. The intrusion was terrifying in the moment, but soon the darkness seeped back out of him and Death spoke.

“You have seen a great many things in your short life, young one.” Something seemed to shift in Death’s tone of voice; recognition, perhaps? “What is your name?”

He hesitated just a little before replying. “I’m Teddie.”

Death chuckled slightly. “Teddie, huh? Do you really have a human form?”

For the first time since he arrived, a huge grin split over his face. “Yup! It’s beary attractive, if I do say so myself.”

“Is that so?”

Teddie nodded his bulky mascot head, still smiling brightly.

“I used to have a human form, once. He was probably also very attractive, as you say.” The voice the darkness used was beginning to get more human and a little less…scary.

Teddie gasped. “Really? You did?”

“Only momentarily. I went by the name of Ryoji back then, though there are still some who prefer to call me by that title.”

“That’s so cool! Did you wish really hard to get it too?”

“No…? I only had it because I had been freed from my prison inside of the people who became the Great Seal. It’s….left me with lingering feelings of humanity.”

For a moment Teddie looked confused, then his smile faded completely.

“You’re Death, right?”

“Yes.”

His gaze shifted down to his tiny blue feet. “So, if you’re Death….does that mean that you’re the one who took Nana-chan away from us…? Away from me…?”

For a second, the darkness around him seemed just a bit lighter, then he realized that it actually was becoming lighter. In its wake he saw a boy around his friends’ age, bright yellow scarf billowing in a nonexistent wind. He was shimmering just like Minako had been; only a ghostly fraction of what he really was.

“Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end,” the boy recited, using a somewhat similar voice to the one Death had. It was no longer deep and rough and struggling to be heard, but instead sounded like the type of voice a normal teenage boy would have. Teddie vaguely noted he even sounded a little like Yosuke.

“B-but….she was only little….and I could have saved her-”

“It matters not who you are, death awaits you.”

Death, or Ryoji, or whatever his name was, sighed and placed a comforting, translucent hand on the bear’s back. “I am sorry for your loss. Truly.”

Teddie began to cry in his typical cartoonish fashion, though the emotion behind it was clearly real and powerful. “She’s dead, and I wasn’t able to save her, even Sensei and the others weren’t able to save her, and here I am, nothing but a useless Shadow now because I can’t do anything!”

“Hey there,” Ryoji said, putting each of his hands on either side of Teddie’s big head. “I may not have known you long, young one, but I have been able to see what you have seen, and I know you are not as useless as you think you are. There are people who love you and miss you.”

“But I’m a Shadow!” Teddie wailed. “I’m what we’ve been fighting against this whole time! What if they don’t like me anymore?” His squeaky, hiccuping voice dropped to a whisper. “What if I’m dangerous?”

Ryoji smiled sadly and shook his head. “When I was living in the human world, oblivious to who and what I really was, I made some good friends. Friends I knew I wouldn’t trade the world for. Once we found out that I was not only a Shadow, but Death itself, set to be used to bring about the end of the world, I thought that they would shun me, or kill me on sight. To this moment, I still wish they had. But Teddie, they loved me anyway. Even in the face of their impending doom, they refused to kill me because they loved my human side so much.”

Teddie listened to his tale with intense interest.

“I don’t see why your friends wouldn’t do the same with you.” He smiled. “They seem like good people. So don’t worry.”

Teddie’s tears had stopped at this point, and he gained a flicker of happiness in his big, plastic eyes.

“You’re more than a Shadow, Teddie. Please remember this.”

“Really?”

Ryoji could hear the hope in his voice and practically see the slight twinkle in his eye.

“Really.” He ruffled the small tuft of blue hair on the bear’s head. “Now please, go out there. Go back to your home and get the happy ending I didn’t.”

Tears quickly drying, Teddie nodded. The ghostly figure of Ryoji disappeared back into the quickly dissipating darkness, and soon he was completely alone.

“But…where do I go? I don’t know how to get home…”

As soon as the words left him, headlights filled his field of vision, and he had bearly enough time to duck out of the way of the incoming….limousine?

A man dressed all in blue exited the driver’s seat, looking panicked.

“Are you a Guest?” he asked nervously.

Teddie was very confused; he didn’t know there could be cars in the….wherever this place was. He didn’t know what the strange man meant by 'guest’, either.

The man continued to stare at him, facial expressions quickly turning from panic to confusion to, suddenly, a warm smile.

“Come inside, with me. The fog is slowly but surely lifting, and I promise we will get you where you need to be. There’s always a reason why someone or something crosses paths with us.” The man held out his hand. “Come along.”

Teddie looked from the man’s hand to his face and back again.

Remembering Ryoji’s soothing words, he reached out and took it.


End file.
